Sunday, February 1, 2009

I was recently in Hawaii, got a tattoo that was suppose to be the kanji for HOPE however now that I am home I have done some searching and everything I am finding is not what I actually got. Could you possibly have any idea what actually I have now tattoo'd to my back?

Eh, could've been worse. What Rob pointed out is likely what happened: whoever did this used a literal translation of "to hope/expect" and just took the first character (even then, 期する wouldn't quite mean what she thinks it means). KF

As a Chinese American and teacher of the Chinese language, I frequently lament at these sorts of well intentioned but misguided forms of expression.

Here is her answer:First, one needs to understand that many Chinese concepts require word combinations or compounding in order to properly convey an idea. There are many different and distinct words which have the same pronunciation. Conversely, there can be multiple pronunciations of the same written word.

期 has two pronunciations: qī and jī. When pronounced qī, it means, depending on the usage, "time period", "phase", "stage", "hope, "expect". When pronounced jī, i means, "completely". So, although "hope" is one of the meanings of this word, one needs to combine it with another word if one wants to convey the concept of "hope" in its most profound sense.

希望 xī wàng, is a noun and verb. It means "hope" , as in, "I hope she will listen to my suggestions.

期望 qī wàng, is also a noun and a verb. It means "to expect", "to hope earnestly" and "expectation", "hope", as in "Her parents must have high hope for her."